Oh, for a part in BHP Billiton’s battle for mining rival Rio Tinto Group. While the two Anglo-Australian mining giants keep a long line of legal advisers billing late into the night, stats on European M&A in January show just how gruesome a start the 2008 deals market is off to.
According to data provider Mergermarket, European M&A deals announced in January were worth €36.5bn (£27.1bn), down from €77.3bn (£57.5bn) last year. The number of deals announced was also dramatically down, from 655 last January to 331 for the first month of 2008.
